Global Electronic Components Distributor Speeds Product Onboarding by 50%

1. CASE STUDY Global Electronic Components Distributor Speeds Product Onboarding by 50% REQUEST A DEMO Amazepxm.com

2. World-Renowned Electronic Components Distributor Powers Product Onboarding with Blue Meteor's Amaze PXM Software for eCommerce When you’re a global distributor of electronic components, introducing new, innovative products to engineers and procurement specialists is an important part of business for both buyer and seller. That’s what our client strives to do every day as the world’s leading high-service distributor of electronics and maintenance products. Headquartered in Oxford, United Kingdom, the company sells top-quality parts across more than 80 countries through its e-commerce channel, offering goods from the world’s leading brands. ⚫INDUSTRY B2b eCommerce Electronics and Maintenance Products ⚫REVENUE £1,266.2 Million ⚫SUPPLIERS 2,500 Our vision is to be customer focused, so that means we focus on the quality of our content for the channels that customers want to engage in. ⚫PRODUCTS 500,000+ ⚫CUSTOMERS 1 Million+ ⚫LOCATION Part of the company success lies in meeting the complex eCommerce needs of its customers. From organized product data to seamless navigation and search to data sheets and application guides, the distribution company knows that professional buyers rely on quality product content and a structured website to make confident purchase decisions for their businesses. the distribution company also knows that introducing new online products and ensuring quality content depend on effective relationships with its 2,500 suppliers. Oxford, United Kingdom The responsibility for managing product content falls with the product content team. With a worldwide team of 120 managing content for more than 500,000 products available to over 1 million customers, the team collaborates with product management, marketing, eCommerce, and supply management to ensure product content delivers value to customers. “Our vision is to be customer focused, so that means we focus on the quality of our content for the channels that customers want to engage in,” says the head of product content team “We know that high-quality content is key for our suppliers and customers alike, so we need to engage very effectively,” he says of the new product introduction (NPI) process. info@bluemeteor.com amazepxm.com Blue Meteor Inc, 50 South Main Street, Suite 200-#217, Naperville, IL 60540

3. Fusing Disparate Processes In the past, before loading a SKU to its website, the distributor had to manage several processes for collecting, standardizing, and loading different types of content. They would first obtain product information from suppliers such as product categories, attributes, and attribute values. Next, they’d gather digital assets such as data sheets and product images. Then, they’d collect transactional data like payment and ordering information. The team would then create the technical copy, features, and benefits that appear on the product page. With tight deadlines, high standards for product content, and tens of thousands of new products to introduce each year, it was crucial, yet difficult, for the distributor to move these processes forward seamlessly and quickly. CHALLENGES ⚫Multiple, disparate NPI processes ⚫Lengthy NPI process requiring many weeks to onboard new products ⚫Incomplete, inconsistent, poor-quality product content ⚫Poor customer “We had five or six disparate processes we joined together ourselves, then plugged into various systems. “That manifested itself into a very long time to market with a huge amount of our time devoted to the NPI process. There was a fair bit of dissatisfaction for us and our suppliers” he adds. perception of product content ⚫Low customer engagement ⚫Low online conversion These disjointed processes also led to errors in the product content that negatively affected website navigation, search, and conversion. With NPI requiring many weeks to launch a single product and poor perception of content among distributors customers, the team knew there had to be a better way. “We needed to take focus away from just NPI to the whole content set and give it all equal value”, says after one of the executive who was doing research to find the right solution for their problem. info@bluemeteor.com amazepxm.com Blue Meteor Inc, 50 South Main Street, Suite 200-#217, Naperville, IL 60540

4. The Right Component for Successful Product Introduction The end vision is to reduce NPI process to 24 hours. While that isn’t yet a reality, the team has been able to successfully go live with 26,000 SKUs in 25 percent of the time using Amaze PXM product information management solution. A significant improvement for the company NPI process, Amaze PXM’s syndication platform Bridge is content agnostic and works with product, transactional, and digital asset information. Using patented machine learning technology, Bridge classifies SKUs between supplier and distributor product hierarchies, maps product attributes between product models, and transforms values for consistency in spelling and formatting. For many distributors, NPI is lengthy because content inconsistencies and gaps must be fixed in supplier product data before displaying online. Bridge eliminates this manual, repetitive work by automatically mapping content between a supplier’s product model and a distributor’s. Bridge also recommends mapping ideas if product content isn’t an exact match between supplier and distributor. The result is reduced guesswork and errors, faster time to market, and improved content quality—the winning formula for product assortment growth and increased eCommerce sales. Bridge reduces guesswork and errors, speeds time to market, and improves content quality For example, one of the suppliers may refer to the coil resistance of a high-frequency relay as 1.6 kiloohms while a second supplier calls it 1.6 kΩ and a third supplier refers to itas 1.60 kΩ. In some cases, a supplier may not even have this information available. Multiplied by tens of thousands of SKUs and millions of data points, fixing these problems is tedious, costly, and time consuming. In addition, when poor-quality product information is displayed online, it prevents buyers from quickly finding the products they need, which is integral to their jobs as professional purchasers. info@bluemeteor.com amazepxm.com Blue Meteor Inc, 50 South Main Street, Suite 200-#217, Naperville, IL 60540

5. Powering a High-Speed, Integrated Network With Amaze PXM, distributors and suppliers partner to trade product content, creating a network in which disparate product content is collected, augmented, and edited at rapid speeds with virtually no errors. “Everybody from product to content to inventory management to pricing—everybody felt the benefit of it,” says the team that has been using Amaze PXM. As the distributor organizes teams around each manufacturer, enabled those teams to seamlessly launch each manufacturer’s new product set to the distributor website. “In our first year using Bridge, we’ve reduced time to market by 50 percent, which helped us double the amount of product content we onboard to our e-commerce site. We’ve been able to grow product assortments for our strategic suppliers, which has resulted in a significant improvement in sales for their products,” the head of the product content team says. Engaging content is a good development for us, and Amaze PXM is an enabler of that. It addresses exactly where we want to go from a strategic direction. Amaze PXM also improved the distributor product attributes and values, which have a direct impact on product discovery, user experience, and customer engagement. “The quality and completeness of the attribute set is vital to product page information and the filters we use for search. “We know that engaging content is a good development for us, and Amaze PXM is an enabler of that. It has allowed us to manage this at pretty decent scale that we couldn’t do if we were doing it from scratch,” he adds. “The amount of content and products you can apply to Amaze PXM is huge, and that addresses exactly where we wants to go from a strategic direction.” Results 50% reduction in time to market Improved customer engagement, conversion rates, and e-commerce sales Increased content accuracy, completeness, and consistency Consolidated NPI processes resulting in improved collaboration, workflow, and efficiency info@bluemeteor.com amazepxm.com Blue Meteor Inc, 50 South Main Street, Suite 200-#217, Naperville, IL 60540

6. Own the Digital shelf with Amaze PXM! Create best-in-class online product experiences for your customers with Amaze Product Experience Management SaaS and boost your eCommerce revenue. Connect with us REQUEST A DEMO amazepxm.com